Re: Scientific and common names in SKOS

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Houghton,Andrew <houghtoa@oclc.org> wrote:

> > From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org [mailto:public-esw-thes-
> > request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Sini, Margherita (KCEW)
> > Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 1:49 PM
> > To: public-esw-thes@w3.org
> > Subject: Scientific and common names in SKOS
> >
> >
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I have the following problem: how to represent a KOS which contains
> > organisms
> > with scientific names and common names in SKOS?
> >
> > example for plants:  potatoes and "Solanum tuberosum", will these be 2
> > skos:concepts? NOTE: they may be both descriptors in the KOS, for
> > indexing
> > purposes.
> > Both can have multiple non-descriptors...
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > OR
> >
> > <skos:Concept rdf:about="http://www.fao.org/aims/aos/agrovoc#potatoes">
> >     <skos:prefLabel xml:lang="en">potatoes</skos:prefLabel>
> >     <skos:prefLabel xml:lang="LA">Solanum tuberosum</skos:prefLabel>
> > </skos:Concept>
> >
> > What if in the terminology i use both scientific name and common name
> > are
> > preferred and they are both marked in English? ... i cannot use 2
> > skos:prefLabel  for same language...
>
> Why not just declare fao:commonLabel and fao:scientificLabel as
> sub-properties of skos:prefLabel?
>
> Something like:
>
> <rdf:Property rdf:about="http://www.fao.org/aims/aos/agrovoc/commonLabel">
>  <rdfs:subPropertyof rdf:resource="
> http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos#prefLabel"/>
> </rdf:Property>
>
> <rdf:Property rdf:about="
> http://www.fao.org/aims/aos/agrovoc/scientificLabel">
>  <rdfs:subPropertyof rdf:resource="
> http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos#prefLabel"/>
> </rdf:Property>
>

If you can't have two prefLabels, you can't do this. This means that each
time you say

x commonLabel foo
y scientificLabel bar

You have inferred (because of what subPropertyOf means - see rdfs7 in
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/)

x prefLabel foo
y prefLabel bar

i.e. two values for prefLabel.

You can, however, have two altLabels.

-Alan